Recipe {Homemade Chili/Taco Seasoning}

I stumbled on this recipe one day because I was tired of taco and chili seasoning packets.  They are so high in sodium (and chemicals) and I wasn't finding a brand that had the taste I was looking for.  Tacos are our go-to lazy dinner and when it's cold we love to make chili.  After some quick googling I ended up on mybakingaddiction.com and found this little gem.  It is completely customizable and as it is, it is not too spicy but that doesn't mean you can't turn it up a notch!

This yields about 2/3 cup of seasoning and it stores great.

Ingredients
4 tablespoons chili powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (I like 2 teaspoons)
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon dried oregano
2 teaspoons paprika (I like smoked paprika)
2 tablespoons ground cumin
3 teaspoons sea salt (I do not put salt in my mix)
4 teaspoons black pepper (sometimes I omit this and do it to taste)

Combine in a medium bowl and mix all ingredients together.  Store in an air tight container at room temperature.  I use 2.5 to 3 tablespoons for each dish.  I believe this yields about 5-7 dishes worth of servings.

Cooking {Salt Crusted Snapper}

One of the husband's goals is to try to be more adventurous with cooking and try to make more "difficult" dishes.  This week's attempt was salt crusted snapper.

I have seen this done on a few cooking shows and it looked super intimidating.  The husband used to be a fishmonger at a grocery store and while it probably wasn't his favorite job, he knows how to fillet fish and prep them from scratch so it is much more cost effective now to just buy whole fishes if we can.  It's an awesome skill set to have!

He followed this recipe from Mario Batali for Food Network:

Ingredients

1 whole 3-pound fish such as snapper, bream, sea bass or porgy

4 egg whites

2 cups kosher salt

1 bunch fresh thyme

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 lemon, cut into wedges

Directions

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.

Clean and gut fish, remove top and bottom fins, scale and remove gills. Whisk egg whites to soft peaks and fold in salt. Place thyme in body cavity and set aside. Place 4 tablespoons of egg white mixture on a large platter, suitable for oven to table use. Place fish on top of mixture and spoon remaining mixture over top of fish. Place fish and platter in oven and bake for 25 to 30 minutes. remove and strike crust to crack. Carefully remove salt crust from top of fish and divide flesh among two plates. Serve with good oil and lemons.

Things we did differently - we stuffed our fish with lemon slices, thyme and olive oil.  We also used almost a whole box of kosher salt.  The recipe says to spread the egg/salt mixture on the bottom of the dish and then place the fish on top of it.  He did that but once it baked, it was stuck on there and we are still soaking the dish trying to get some of it off.  I would suggest a piece of parchment paper then spread the salt/egg white mixture.  You want the egg/salt mixture to be the consistency of cake frosting so it's easier to mould it to the fish and it isn't runny.  I think next time using a sheet pan would be better than a pyrex.

The idea is that the salt dome holds the heat in and allows the fish to cook evenly and perfectly. It definitely cooks the fish perfectly but we had some trouble peeling off our salt dome so some fish was a little salty.  I'm not sure if we cooked it a little too long or didn't let it cool before we cracked it or missed some secret trick.  Aside from some of the salt, it was awesome and we want to try it again!

Spreading the base layer of egg/salt mixture

Baked and ready for cracking

The meat is so tender it is literally fall off the bone delicious!